Groovy:

It was an excellent idea to feature the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 in a post to the Google Earth Community forums. TimesOnline has offered the public a good service by presenting this information to them, although perhaps the invitation to rank the pre-selected list of problems may give the impression that these are all separate, discrete issues, when not all of us hold that view. In addition, the 300-character limit for responses just barely allows a sound bite. I hope the committee can accomplish something effective toward the solution of important problems, although the process may be skewed too much by the political agenda of one person.

But, in the Google Earth Community, we have a collection of many intelligent people who are also thinking about these problems, and a great forum for discussing them. Our group is self-selected rather than hand-picked by one person or a small group of people. Why not have our own parallel discussion about these issues in a thread established for that purpose? Someone could let TimesOnline know that we are doing this.

Does anyone think this is a good idea? If so, perhaps one of the moderators or Groovy could initiate a free-form discussion (no pre-selected menus of problems or multiple choice questions) in one of the moderated forums. But in order to keep the discussion going, it would be necessary to evaluate and approve incoming posts frequently. Of course, our posts would need to avoid endorsing political candidates, other blatant politicking, or statements likely to cause offense.

A title such as "Copenhagen Consensus Discussion" might work, along with a link to this thread, and a short description of the task at hand (If we had $50 billion to use toward solving the world's most significant problems, how should we spend it?). We can each respond as many times as we want. The goal would not be for us to achieve a consensus, but rather to get our diverse ideas out on the table.